Amidst the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, a video clip (here and here) of the Emir of Qatar, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al Tani is being shared with different claims. One post claims that the Emir called the Indian Muslims converted and that they should refrain from being involved in Arab issues related to Gaza. Another post claims that the Emir announced he would stop the gas supply to the world if the bombing of Gaza is not stopped. Let’s verify the claims made in these posts.
Claim: Emir of Qatar called Indian Muslims converted and that they should refrain from involving in Gaza issue. He announced that Qatar would stop supplying gas if bombing Gaza is not stopped.
Fact: The video dates back to the Doha forum, in 2017. The video shows the opening speech of Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani at the forum. He made no comments as claimed during this address. Hence, the claims made regarding the video clip are Misleading.
On performing a reverse image search of the keyframes of the video, we found the longer version of the video on YouTube (here and here). We found that this video dates back to 2017 when Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani gave his opening speech at the Doha Forum 2017.
Upon further research on the content of the speech, we found an article by the Doha forum and news reports (here and here) mentioning his address. The forum was held under the theme “development, stability and refugee crisis” where he expressed his concern about Palestinian refugees in his speech. He stated that the ‘Palestine issue started as a cause of people who were uprooted from their land’ in the viral video.
He further stated that stability and development are interdependent and intertwined and called for international cooperation to solve the flow of refugees across the borders in his opening address. He neither warned about stopping gas supply to the world nor called out Indian Muslims to stop involving in Arab issues.
To sum up, an old video of the Emir of Qatar is being shared with false claims in relation to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
